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MadVR upscaling algorithms - can anyone suggest a good scene for comparing?

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Sandy B Ridge:
I've been playing about a bit with MadVR and different upscaling settings. Have you got a favourite scene or clip that you use to test any differences?

I would say you need something with a bit of fine detail eg text, some straight and curved lines of different slope and radii and some blocks or lines of different colours.

Is anime or animated videos particularly good for testing because of the well defined lines and blocks of colours?

What do you guys think? I'm just curious!

SBR

6233638:
It's really difficult to just suggest one thing, or even a couple of things to look at. I've spent a lot of time evaluating the various scaling options in madVR as they have evolved over time.

If your system can handle it, I would recommend simply using Jinc 3 with the anti-ringing filter enabled, but not the linear light option, for both Chroma and Luma upscaling. Never use linear light for upscaling.
Catmull-Rom with both the anti-ringing and linear light options enabled seems to give the best quality downsampling - this is the only option where linear light scaling is acceptable.


If your system can't handle that, or you are primarily watching a lot of highly compressed, low resolution videos, then things get a bit more complicated.

After Jinc 3 AR, my preference for Luma upscaling is SoftCubic 80. (without linear light/ar) As the name suggests, this gives a soft result, but it avoids introducing any ringing artifacts, tends to avoid aliasing very well, and can de-emphasise mosquito noise in poorly compressed content. (older DVDs for example) In fact, once we get per-resolution scaling options, I am likely to switch back to this for SD upscaling rather than using Jinc 3 AR. I watch a mixture of HD and SD content though, and Jinc 3 AR looks better with the HD stuff.

If that is too soft for you, you may want to try Lanczos 3 AR which gives similar results to Jinc but with more aliasing, and less of a performance hit, or Mitchell-Netravali which is in-between Lanczos and SoftCubic for sharpness, and performs very well. Both have a tendency to show aliasing and ringing though.

With animated content, I would definitely be leaning towards the softer scaling algorithms.


If you need to reduce Chroma scaling settings, I would try Lanczos 3 AR, then Bicubic 75 AR if your system can't handle that. Chroma scaling is quite well optimized these days though, so most systems should be able to handle Jinc 3 AR.


If you are having performance issues with downscaling, the first thing to try is disabling linear light scaling with Catmull-Rom. (turn that off before the anti-ringing filter)

Sandy B Ridge:
Thanks, those are really good tips. Maybe JRiver could add your post as a wiki topic.

I've followed your excellent discussions on doom9 and this is a great summary.

I was just curious whether anyone has a few favourite clips/scenes to evaluate the different algorithms.

Cheers,

SBR

jmone:
Hey SBR,
If you have the re-released version of Gladiator on BD (note: the first BD version has big issues with so much processing that arrows would "disappear" mid flight) the opening war scene has lots of flying arrows etc which I find is a good demo.  That said I too also use Jinc3 +AR on the HTPC as my main focus is good BD playback.  On weaker GPU's I'd recommend Mitchell-Netravali as it is pretty good and is very easy on the GPU.  It gets down to preference at the end of the day, as you may not notice any great difference.
Thanks
Nathan

jmone:
...also keep in mind that it really also depends on how big your screen is, your seating distance, and visual acuity.  If you have a 40" screen at 5m then just about anything will do.  It is much easier to see the impact of the algorithms on a big screen (say 100" at 3 feet)!

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